The New York Times piece is intriguing.

The Left don’t like the electoral college system. They think if it were a popularity contest, they would always win.

Ask the Republican states that redrew districts and then lost during the mid-terms.

Ask bigger cities that annexed smaller ones thinking their mayor-for-life wouldn’t get voted out the first chance the annexed towns could.

The electoral college system is absolute genius and vets the candidate who understands strategy versus the one who doesn’t. If you get a bad president, you can be sure the losing one was even worse.

The method is simple enough: it ensures fairness and equality for all 50 states. No state gets to lord over the other ones, and it forces both candidates to campaign in every single state for votes; otherwise, all they would have to do is campaign in the five most populous states and then the other states become angry and fight back in any way they can.

The candidate that can connect to voters across the country the best wins. It also ensures that there isn’t over-performing: you can win a large state by one vote, or have the entire state vote for you, you only get so many electoral votes. You don’t over-campaign in states where you’re going to win with ease.

The Democrats do not like this set-up. They like to gloss over places that aren’t in love with their ideology and use brute force to win. Who cares if there are holes in your theories when the point is to strut around in a paper crown?

There will be all sorts of pseudo-moralistic posturing why the electoral college is flawed, but a competent candidate can size up the landscape, get to know all 50 regions, and then make a plan. That separates the better candidate from the one trying to guess how this whole presidential campaign thing works. It’s actual a very simple model to navigate, and honestly, there is no external barrier. It is a test of presidential competency.

A successful candidate can easily win if they look like they would be fun at a cocktail party, was a governor or had a television presence, has a good speech writer, focuses on Independent voters, has agreeable policies on both the middle class and billionaire economies, and understands the electoral college system. That’s not a prohibitive set of criteria.

If you can’t even bother checking off six little boxes, then don’t run for president. You’re not good enough.

And if your party, after countless decades, is still clueless about the golden six rules of winning a presidency, they should pack it in. It is not hard to find a candidate who can hit six benchmarks.

Know the country before you run for a position to look after it. It is as simple as that.